Computer virus or sabotage?

Posted on 05/06/2020 @ 12:13pm by Lieutenant JG Jasmine Langtree & Ensign Romal Seshel

Mission: S1E2: The Plomeek Soup Conundrum
Location: Crazy Horse/Blackwell
Timeline: Day 5 at 1000

Lt. Langtree and others from the engineering section we ordered to head over to the Blackwell. Jasmine decided to take the shuttle Flying Hawk over. The boys from engineering needed equipment and would beam over a little later. She checked with Romal and his staff. they would try to replace the isolinear control chips and then reload the database from the archives. It was a long shot Jasmine had been going through the code line by line it was long and tedious work and she had only gotten through about half of it before being called away to the bridge. Once there she discovered they were on final approach to the Blackwell and it just hung there in space almost dead not even any running lights on. Jasmine scanned the vessel, minimal life support, there were 12 life signs, the atmosphere was 12 lbs per square inch a little thin but the CO2 scrubbers were still working. There was at least 12 hours of air left.

Two shuttle's had already docked with a security contingent and was beaming prisoners off the ship as well as the crew.

Using the shuttle's transporter, Romal and his engineering team beamed directly onto Blackwell's bridge. Tapping his combadge, Romal communicated with the Flying Hawk. "Seshel to Stratus - we're still in one piece!"

Calliope smirked, =/\= Stay that way, please she replied. The shuttle is still holding together too. Clear space as far as sensors can see...no ion storms or anything of that nature. =/\=

Romal then looked around the bridge and saw a very weary Captain Charles Burns, along with a few officers in dire need of sleep. Romal smiled and introduced himself "Hello Captain. I'm the Assistant Chief Engineer Romal Seshel from the USS Crazy Horse and I've brought a team of engineers to help fix your ship."

"Don't get me wrong, Ensign Seshel, we're mighty glad to see you, but we've gone through hell trying to get this Eruwan class tub to work again. We've been trying for days, but none of us are engineers. We just don't have the expertise to fix this old ship. With prisoners in cells that no longer work, we've had to weld together doors just to keep them in. It feels like this whole tub is going to fall apart, with bad doors, bad turbo lifts, bad replicators and even the warp drive and impulse doesn't work properly."

Jasmine beamed to deck four, where the central computer core was. She found the primary access control panel of the central computer and removed it. Just as she had expected several of the Isolinear optical chips were dark and burned out. She ran her tricorder over the damaged components. Traces of the virus were still there and were in the process of consuming the chips.

Romal walked over to an overwrought Captain Burns. "I've an idea of what's wrong with the Blackwell, Captain - a computer virus!"

"Computer virus!!? Where could it have come from?" the Captain asked, then turned to his officers on the bridge, "You know, I thought our computer was acting a little funny. You know that other officer from the Flying Hawk, I think her name was; Lieutenant Langtree, she wanted to have a look at our computers."

"Aye, I was going to ask you where she is. Lieutenant Langtree beamed over just ahead of us. Where is your ship's main computer, Captain?" Romal asked him, ready to dive right in.

"That would be deck four, engineering, but lots of luck getting there! Doors close by themselves and won't open, the turbo lift is on the fritz, but maybe you can get there by climbing down the auxiliary shaft."

=/\= Langtree to Romal, I'm in the main computer core on deck 4. Just as we thought the computer core is burned out several of the isolinear chips are dark. I am removing them for further analysis. =/\= Jasmine said.

"That's just what we'll do, then." Romal replied, then turned to his engineers, "Breylon, Scatz, Plairont, Scriver, Ortair, lets get moving!"

"Aye, Sir." they replied.

As it turned out, even getting off the bridge took at least ten minutes with two engineers working on pneumatic doors that only stubbornly opened. Several of Burn's own crew, trapped on the other side of the broken doors, were happy to finally get back to the bridge.

After reaching the turbo lift, just like Captain Burns had said - it wouldn't work. Forced to take the auxiliary shaft, Romal's engineering team carefully made their way down to deck four and emerged onto that level. Finding Lieutenant Langtree was simple enough, they just went to the main computer room and there she was, seated at a computer counsel and going through computer code.

"Hello, Lieutenant Langtree!" Romal said to get her attention away from the counsel. "We just got here and Captain Burns briefed us on the condition of his ship. I think we might need to run a level two diagnostic test to find which of the isolinear control chips have been damaged from the virus." then he noticed at all the burnt out isolinear chips the science officer had pulled out.

"Romal look at these, looks like the virus was much more advanced in this core than ours. See how blacked and distorted these chips are. this is actual physical damage. I scanned for nanites but something seems to have invaded the three dimensional holographic storage medium. Could be extra dimensional, what do you think?" Jasmine said.

"Something is majorly wrong with these isolinear control chips!. . .and you say, something invaded the three dimensional holographic storage medium?" Romal asked, then took out his engineering tricorder to examine it more closely.

"Well it could be something causing a feedback loop as well, look at these chips." Jasmine said.

Jasmine pulled out a box of isolinear chips they had pulled out of the Astrometrics main holographic control computer on the Crazy Horse. The burned out chips looked and had identical damage.

They were all burned up brownish black as if a light filament had fused.

"I think you're onto something! We'll need to take a closer look at the holographic imagery subsystem and the matter conversion subsystem." Romal suggested, then looked at Jasmine. "The holodeck! That's where those subsystems would be located." then the Assistant Chief paused for a minute, "Well, no use standing around, let's go to the holodeck."

"Yes lets go, we can replace the control chips later, lets check out the holodeck imagery processors." Jasmine said.

They went up a deck as the holodeck was on deck three near the upper computer core.

The L14 through M64 chips were literally blackened. So were the navigational subsystem chips. The computer core was dark and smelled of burned ozone.

"Would you look at that, what a mess". Jasmine said.

Jasmine knew the same fate awaited the Crazy Horse if they didn't figure this out.

Jasmine ran a scanner over the chips...

"The main components aren't damaged just the control chips". she said.

She looked at Romal, "I think we should check the main life support systems control chips. that should be out first priority, that will give us some time to work."

"Aye, I have to agree." Romal nodded, then turned to his engineering team. "While we do that, Scriver, Ortair, I need you both to get the subsystems of holographic imagery and matter conversion working again. Replace any damaged isolinear chips with whatever you can find in the parts room that I noticed back there."

"Aye, Sir." they both replied.

"Now, as for life support, that would be the environmental systems station on the bridge." Romal offered, then smiled, "Fortunately, I happened to notice a backup station on deck four in engineering. So, I suggest we retrace our steps back to engineering."

"I took the liberty of fabricating hundreds of control chips, with the firmware already installed. Jasmine said as they made their way back to engineering.

Once again, they climbed down the auxiliary shaft to deck four and searched for the backup to the ES station, until they finally found it. Romal then scanned the ES station with his tricorder, quickly finding the problem. "Lieutenant Langtree, the recycling of atmosphere is impeded by faulty CO2 scrubbers. I need to get the reserve backup system working again or we'll run out of breathable air. I'm not sure how much time we have left."

"I'll go get a scrubber there should be a set in maintenance storage above the Di-Lithium re-compositor console."

Jasmine had to really stretch to get the maintenance hatch opened. She grabbed a couple of CO2 scrubbers.

Jasmine checked her PADD, found the console auxiliary air handing console, then got down under the console and removed the panel. Again the chips were burned out, and the CO2 scrubbers were thoroughly contaminated by carbon infusion. She placed her tool kit down and looked to see what she had.

Available tools:

-Phaser Welding Torch
-Interphasic Coil Spanner
-ODN Recoupler
-EM Field Manipulator
-Coil Spanner
-Iso-Modulator
-ODN Scanner
-Sonic Driver
-Phase Decompiler
-EJ-7 Interlock

Jasmine used the sonic driver to unscrew the the scrubber then used the ODN coupler set to decouple and removed the damaged part.

"You were right this scrubber is useless." Jasmine said.

She installed a new scrubber and re-coupled it then used the sonic driver to seal it.

Then she pulled out the damaged isolinear chips and replaced them with fresh ones.

"I'll have to do this manually until we can get the main computer back up. Jasmine worked the controls manually. Auxiliary Air Handling back online and was working but the ventilation system was down. I'll bet the main CO2 scrubbers are out too in the primary life support systems." Jasmine suggested.

"It looks like we need to activate the ventilation fans as well." Romal said, then tapped a control panel that activated fans throughout the room. "Breylon, Scatz, check on the cryogenic oxygen tanks. I want to know what shape they're in and if they're even working. Plairont, you're with me, we have to get those CO2 scrubbers working on the primary life support system. " And soon, the engineers were working fast and efficiently.

"Aye, Sir." they quickly replied and went about their tasks.

Jasmine could tell the air was clearing after Romal got the ventilator back online. The air was smelling a bit better too.

Jasmine helped the engineering staff restore the primary life support systems as well as lighting and heat. She also did more work on the engineering processors by replacing burned out chips.

"Mr Romal, getting this ship back up and running is going to take longer than I thought" Jasmine said. "But at least we can breathe" She added.

Romal smiled at the familiarity, noticing the science officer was now addressing him by his first name. "We do make a good team, don't we, Jasmine." but he went immediately back to business. "I think its time to check on Scriver and Ortair."

Tapping his combadge, he contacted them; "Scriver, Ortair, how are you doing with the holographic imagery and matter conversion subsystems?"

Ortair answered, =/\= It's close to operational, but for some reason, core memory has been partially depleted. It must be the same thing that corrupted the isolinear chips. Should we adjust it to temporarily accept less memory? =/\=

Romal turned to the science officer, "Please stand by - What do you think, Jasmine? Should we have the Crazy Horse beam over a new core memory?. . .assuming they have core memory to spare."

"I was working on the core before we came here, its a mess I removed the bad chips but only installed the good ones. I was going to suggest I go back to work on that. Once the core is done I can download the ships operating systems from back up archives." Jasmine said.

"Excellent work, Jasmine." Romal replied, quite happy they were making real progress on this old Eruwan class tub.

Tapping his combadge, he called the two engineers on deck three, "Scriver and Ortair, I want you both to check out the impulse engines, especially the Driver Coil Assembly, which may need replacing before they damage the Impulse Reactor Chambers."

=/\= Aye, Sir. We're on our way. =/\= came the reply.

"As for me, I'll be working on the Matter Reactant Injectors. From what I read from the gauges, they seemed to be a little off and that's why the warp drive is inoperative." Romal explained, then turned to his other engineers, "Breylon, Scatz, Plairont, your all with me! We have an MRI to adjust."

"Aye, Sir." they replied.

"After this, we'll all take a look at the impulse drive. . .We'll get this old tub working!" Romal vowed, as he headed for the heart of the Blackwell.

"Romal, I don't think I'll be much use to you in engineering, especially with the engines, I'm definitely better at fixing computers than I am engines, so I'll be in the computer core. Once I'm finished and have reloaded the operating system I will call you, shouldn't take much more than an hour or two I think." Jasmine said.

"It should take my engineering team two to three hours, Jasmine, depending on the damage. I'll keep you informed." Romal replied, then left with his team.

Jasmine made her way back to the computer core and finished unplugging the rest of the burned out chips that didn't take long, it was plugging in the good chips in the right order. It wasn't hard work just time consuming. There were over 350 individual chips.

As she was working she noted the lights came on. Romal must have restored the batteries or maybe even got the fusion generators back on.

It took just over an hour and a half to rebuilt the computer core.

Jasmine replaced the panel, and activated the console. "Ready to accept input." flashed on the screen. Jasmine programmed the computer to reload the operating system from the saved archive. Once that was completed she tapped her commbadge.

=/\=Jasmine to Romal, I've got the main computer back online, whats your status?=/\=

At the time, Romal and his team had just finished replacing the last Driver Coil Assembly and were then positioning the cover over it. "Aye Jasmine, that's great news! My team has just finished, too. The small stuff, like pneumatic doors and turbolifts, they can have those repaired at the nearest starbase. Shall we meet on the bridge and let Captain Burns know about our repairs, before returning to the Crazy Horse?"

"Alright I'm on my way" Jasmine said.

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A post by:


Lieutenant JG Jasmine Langtree
Chief Science Officer
USS Crazy Horse

Ensign Romal Seshel
Assistant Chief Engineering Officer
USS Crazy Horse